The presentation at WUNCA 2010

1. e-Learning Delivery System
The challenges
ผศ.ดร.เด่นพงษ์ สุดภักดี
ผู้ช่วยอธิการบดีฝ่ายวิชาการ และ
ผู้อานวยการสานักนวัตกรรมการเรียนการสอน
มหาวิทยาลัยขอนแก่น

2. Outline
• Delivery system component
• LMS/LCMS Overview
• The challenges

3. Delivery System Components
• Hardware
– Servers and peripherals
– Computer network
– Content production house
• Software
– LMS/LCMS software
– Web server software
– Scripting software
– Database software
– Content authoring tools
– etc…
• Peopleware
– System admin
– Graphic design
– Content production
– Customer service

4. Hardware
• Server and peripherals
– Web server
– Database server
– Storage
• Computer network
– Load balancer
– Switching hubs
• Storage
– Main and Backup
– Local Storage or SAN
– Hard disk (SATA/SAS)

5. Software
• Web server
– Operating system (Windows/Linux)
– Web server (IIS/Apache)
– Scripting language engine
(html/.NET/aspx/php/js/css)
– Cacheing and optimization tools
(Zend optimizer/memcache/eAcellerator)
– Server monitoring tools
• Database
– Database software
(MySQL/MSSQL/PostgreSQL/Oracle)
– Database engine (MySQL: MyISAM/InnoDB)
– Database monitoring tools

6. LMS
“An LMS is a software application for the
administration, documentation, tracking,
and reporting of training programs,
classroom and online events, e-learning
programs, and training content”
Ellis, Ryann K. (2009), Field Guide to Learning Management Systems, ASTD Learning Circuits
“An LCMS is a multi-user environment
where developers may create, store, reuse,
manage, and deliver digital learning
content from a central object repository.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system#Learning_content_management_system_.28LCMS.29

7. Supporting System Integration
• User authentication
– Self registration
– LDAP/OpenID
– External database
• Enrolment
– Self enrolment
– Internal database
– External database
• LCMS integration (Repository/Media
production tool portal/Social media)

8. The Challenges
• System performance
• Ease of use
• Troubleshooting
• Documentations

9. System Performance
• No exact solution for the best hardware
configuration.
– Focus on RAM  HDD  CPU
– Separate web server(s) from database server(s)
– SAS HDD (more expensive)
• Require system monitoring
• Require software tuning
(web server and database server)
– Database tuning is a crucial task
(no exact solution)
• Require optimization and cacheing

10. Case study

11. Case study: Equipment
• 5 web servers
• 1 main database server
• 1 database replication and network file
sharing server
• 1 system monitoring server
• 1 media streaming server
• 1 video encoding/rendering server
• SAN storage
(SAS: 1.5TB and SATA: 8TB)
• Hardware load balancer

12. Case study: Software
• Web server
– Ubuntu 9.10 server 64-bit
– Apache
– PHP5
– eAccelerator
– Memcache
– Oracle Instant Connection
– MOODLE
• Database server
– CentOS 64-bit
– MySQL Enterprise 5.1.36

13. Case study: Average Load
• 3,000 users-visits per day
• 30,000 page-views per day

14. Case study: Monitoring and Alert
• Network Traffic
– Load balancer software
– Cacti
– Google analytics
• Web server monitor and alert
– Cacti
– pingdom (pingdom.com)
(push notification)
• Database monitoring and advisory
– MySQL Enterprise Monitor
– Webyog (webyog.com)

15. Case study : Monitoring
screenshots

16. Case Study: MySQL Tuning
• InnoDB engine
• innodb_buffer_pool_size
• key_buffer_size
• join_buffer_size
• read_buffer_size
• table_cache
• tmp_table_size
• Performance tuning script:
– http://www.day32.com/MySQL/
– http://docs.moodle.org/en/Performance

17. Case study: Moodle
Modifications
• OCI8 Connection
• Streaming of flv files
• Add twitter block
(http://e-
learning.kku.ac.th/tweet_grid.zip)
• Add indexing to slow queries
(recommended by MySQL knowledge base
- https://kb.mysql.com/)

18. Download this presentation
http://slideshare.net/denpong
Contacts
email: denpong@kku.ac.th
Twitter: @denpong
Facebook: denpong